PHILADELPHIA 
A day earlier San Diego State coach Steve Fisher was talking about the fleeting nature of the NCAA Tournament, how it’s a privilege and not a divine right, how it’s a brief moment in time imbibed with wondrous opportunity and possibility, how “often times in the blink of an eye, it’s gone.”

Blink.

It’s gone.

Depending on your perspective, SDSU’s 81-71 loss to Florida Gulf Coast on Sunday night at the Wells Fargo Center either was opportunity lost on the grandest scale or the inevitable march of destiny. Either the Aztecs fell apart in the second half against an obscure opponent from an obscure conference that lost (twice) to Lipscomb this season, or they simply got run over by Cinderella’s carriage.

Regardless, the result spawned one of the most improbable stories in NCAA Tournament history. Florida Gulf Coast, a school that didn’t exist two decades ago and gained Div. I postseason eligibility only two years ago, became the first No. 15 seed to reach the Sweet 16. The previous six who reached the Round of 32 had lost by a combined 90 points.

Florida Gulf Coast (26-10) will fly home to its Fort Myers campus and then to Cowboys Stadium outside Dallas next week to face, of all possible opponents, third-seeded Florida.

The Aztecs (23-11), meanwhile, quietly went from the arena to the airport for a charter flight that already was going to be endless before a snowstorm forced it to divert south and refuel in San Antonio, with an anticipated arrival in San Diego of 4 a.m.

“When it ends, it ends dramatically,” said Fisher, who celebrated his 68th birthday Sunday. “It ends with a train wreck.”

The 7½ minutes this program will rue for days, weeks, even years, began with 11:30 left and FGCU leading 54-52 and the momentum swinging back to the Aztecs after a Xavier Thames block followed by a fast-break layup. Eagles coach Andy Enfield quickly called timeout and subbed in Sherwood Brown, his leading scorer and the Atlantic Sun Player of the Year who had been throttled by foul trouble.

With four minutes to go, the school with the occasional wild boar and alligator walking across campus led 71-52.

Fisher always writes a half-dozen keys to the game on the locker room white board, and at the top of the list Sunday was one word: Runs. The idea was not to allow any runs of 8-0 or greater.

This one was 17-0.

“You know,” point guard Brett Comer said, “when we push the ball and get the crowd behind us and we get a dunk, and then we go to the other end and get a stop and another dunk, it’s hard to try to turn the momentum back. You can try calling timeout or try to draw a foul or something like that, but it’s hard when we keep going and going at you.”

Or as guard Bernard Thompson put it: “Yeah, they start talking to one another, telling each other, ‘We’ve got to go harder. Don’t let them get into your head.’ You can see they’re a little shaken up by how we come out and put the pressure on them. We just come out and try to make them crack.”